Michigan’s Democratic leaders, including GovWhitmer, are quietly continuing a legal battle to shut down a major oil pipeline — even as the rise in gas prices increasingly complicates the politics of the fight.
The dispute over Line 5, an oil and natural gas pipeline running between Michigan and Canada, has dragged on for years, with Whitmer moving unsuccessfully last year to order the pipeline to cease operations.
“Shutting down the pipeline would carry tremendous negative consequences for the Chambers’ members and the economies of the United States and Canada,” lawyers for the business organizations wrote in the brief. “Such a shutdown would constrain an already disrupted energy supply, an especially problematic development given recent decisions related to importation of petroleum products from Russia.”
And Ohio Lt. Gov. John Husted, a Republican, said this week that Michigan's leaders were being"unreasonable and irresponsible" in their efforts to close the line. A portion of the pipeline that funnels oil and gas under the Straits of Mackinac has recently drawn the scrutiny of environmentalists, who warn of the risk of an oil spill in the Great Lakes, although Enbridge has downplayed that risk by noting that the pipeline has not once leaked into the lakes during its decades of operation.
An analysis written earlier this year by Consumer Energy Alliance suggested that gas prices in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania would rise somewhere between 9.47% and 11.66% “independent of any other market conditions,” such as the war in Ukraine, if the line were shut down.